Jacksonville's Moonpie is losing weight, gaining hope

Actor-comedian Dave Hicks, known as Moonpie, chats with store manager Teresa Barber at Bead Here Now in Five Points on Dec. 23. Hicks, 44, has lost about 90 pounds and plans to spend more time in Los Angeles pursuing his entertainment goals.

A doctor's warning and news of a younger friend's death from a heart attack got the attention of Moonpie, shown here with friend Bridget McDonald in 2010.

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There’s less Moonpie than there used to be. About 90 pounds less, in fact.

But he wants to make it clear: Even if Moonpie keeps shrinking, there will still be a Moonpie.

Moonpie, says Dave Hicks, is a persona, a character, one he embraces. But Dave Hicks is who he really is.

And as the pounds drop off, slowly, stubbornly, for real this time, Hicks is sensing that, at 44 years old, change is coming. Change is good.

Everyone knows of MoonPies, the big, chocolately Southern treat. And in Jacksonville’s close-knit TV and film community, everyone knows Moonpie.

He’s an actor and comedian who helped start the busy CineCityJax Facebook group, and he’s hard to miss: A 6-foot-3 guy with a big smile and a girth that’s forever drawing comparisons, he says, to Chris Farley, John Candy and Fatty Arbuckle.

Jacksonville has been a safe place for him.

But lately he feels more confident, ready, he says, to make new decisions for himself. Ready, even, to make a move from Florida to Los Angeles, at least for big parts of the year, to live out his dream to entertain.

Sure, he says: Even if he loses another 150 pounds, he’ll still be the big guy. But he wants to be more than just the funny fat man.

“I can totally be the lead guy now,” Hicks says. “I never saw that before.”

THE BIRTH OF MOONPIE

At Hicks’ regular Wednesday morning Weight Watchers meeting in Orange Park, session leader June Crawford sees the change in him: Hicks has lost 40 pounds or so at various times before, though each time, he gained it back and more.

This time, she said, he seems serious. Grown up.

Her colleague, Pam Mylrea, sees the change in his new Facebook identity: Last month he changed his Moonpie page to Dave Hicks, and started a separate Moonpie fan page.

“I think Moonpie is who he was,” she said. “But I like David. To me, Moonpie is just in the past.”

Hicks grew up in Gainesville, and he migrated to Jacksonville after high school. He’d been big in high school, with a 44-inch waist, and was teased and picked on, of course. He fought back with sarcasm — too much, he says — and humor.

For a long time, there was that hankering to be an entertainer. But he spent years delivering pizzas, working retail, selling life insurance.

Then, a chance: He was working in promotions at WAPE (95.1 FM) 10 or 11 years ago. That’s when the guys on the Morning Zoo show dubbed him Moonpie and sent him out for drive-time antics.

“They were looking for a stunt guy. A fall guy. A jackass,” he says. “It would be” — and here he pauses — “funny.”

Moonpie was the guy who’d eat dog food, drink strange drinks, do crazy things that no one else would do.

He doesn’t complain about it: He’s grateful he got the chance, grateful it helped a shy guy get one foot in the entertainment world.

And it gave him Moonpie.

Later, as Moonpie, he threw his bulk around as one of the First Coast Phat Cats, whose nimble displays of roly-poly dancing entertained Jacksonville Jaguars fans a few years back.

He’s been in numerous 48 Hour Film Project movies. He had a cable access show, “The Babble Show,” for four years. He did stand-up comedy (Folio Weekly named him best comedian this year).

He’s participating in a Jacksonville-made documentary, “It’s Huge,” that follows several men as they try to lose 100 pounds or more. And he was an extra in the movies “Recount” and “Who’s Your Monkey?” both shot in the city.

He also created local buzz when he went to Los Angeles to film a scene in the TV show “Glee” at the height of its popularity. He was on for seven long seconds, playing a dancing teacher.

Tracy Collins, a Jacksonville entertainment reporter (she writes a weekly column for the Times-Union) is a friend of Hicks. She accompanied him when he went back to Los Angeles this fall; he wanted to play tourist and check out the possibilities.

“He’s in entertainment, and Moonpie is a good branding thing, to have something so memorable,” she said. “But with this transition, I think he wants to be taken seriously.”

She still, however, calls him “Pie.” “He’ll always be Pie to me.”

A NEW MOONPIE

As the years passed, Hicks got bigger and bigger. He doesn’t want to say how much he topped out at, but it was so dire that a doctor told him, flat-out, that he was going to die. Soon.

That gets a man’s attention.

So did the text he got this January, that his friend A-Train — Alec Altland — was dead of heart attack. At just 35, on his daughter’s sixth birthday. Altland was a fellow big guy and had been Moonpie’s first partner in the Phat Cats, dancing with him at those Jaguars games.

That sad news kept Hicks on track, just when he was ready to quit again.

For decades, he’d get stressed, and then eat. He’d feel lethargic, and then eat. He’d feel bad about himself, then eat some more.

He doesn’t blame anyone but himself.

“I did it to myself. I’m the one who fell in love with the Little Debbies and stuff,” he said.

The new Dave Hicks has cut way down on cereal, diet soda, salt and breads. He’s become familiar with kale smoothies.

He’s been going to the gym. He walked up 16 floors at a downtown skyscraper, then walked down. He rides his bike. He noticed a difference: His long Sunday trek to his Jaguars seat was easier; he didn’t have to stop halfway.

He doesn’t have a target weight: He just wants to not have to shop at the big-and-tall store. He’s on his way. He once wore 6XL shirts, and even they were a little tight. Now he’s down to 3XL, and they fit fine.

Some yahoos mocked him as he rode by on his bicycle not too long ago. But most people are supportive. He’s been chronicling his weight-loss journey on Facebook, and he’s noticed that people — many of them big people — are following it from around the country.

Jacksonville screenwriter Sharon Cobb has worked on several projects with him and marvels at the changes.

“He’s transforming himself into Dave Hicks,” she says. “And it’s wonderful to see.”

For decades, Hicks says, he felt as if other people were making decisions for him, as if life was happening to him instead of him making life happen.

Not now. “I found myself,” he says. “It took me close to 40 years to find out who I am.”

He’s got a way to go, he knows. But those 90 pounds or so that are gone?

That’s more than just weight: That’s an inward and outward sign of a new Dave Hicks. A new Moonpie, too.